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Stress On The Job: 5 Ways You Are Mentally Sabotaging Yourself

Being stressed on the job is a fact of life these days. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in a position that you loathe, or are fulfilling your lifelong career dreams. Work is stressful. As my dad used to say, “If work were fun, we’d call it play!”

When people comment on their work stress, they tend to attribute it to things like long hours, conflicting priorities, tight deadlines, demanding bosses, difficult co-workers, hectic commutes, etc. And all these are absolutely true: every single one of them contributes to a person’s stress on the job.

But there is another major stressor that I almost never hear mentioned. And that is the mental sabotage we do to ourselves by living with irrational beliefs.

An irrational belief is one that – when you look at it in the cold light of day – you recognize to be false. But in day-to-day life, you act like it is true. You emotionally respond to it, and you make decisions based on it. Here are five irrational beliefs that regularly wreck people in the workplace:

“I have to be perfect.”

Irrational? You bet. Nobody is perfect – you know it; I know it. But we act like we should be flawless in the office. For instance, we are defensive if someone corrects us. Humiliated when we are caught in a mistake. Terrified that our boss will fire us (or at least deliver a scathing annual review) if we screw up. We have to be on-time, on-target, on-demand, and on-tap all the time.

Stress on the job is inevitable at times, but setting irrational expectations for ourselves only creates more pressure.

“I have to be omniscient.”

I have a very high-performing friend. She is in a position of significant responsibility, and she delivers. Period. But every so often (maybe three times in the past 20 years?) it happens that she misses something small and six months later the omission comes to light. Invariably, it causes her to emotionally stress out to the max. When I ask her, “Did you do the best you could with what you knew at the time?” the answer is always “Yes.” But doing her best isn’t enough for her: she feels obligated to be omniscient so that there are never any surprises down the road. Perfection and omniscience are close cousins; they often go hand-in-hand.

“Mistakes are the end of the world.”

If you feel that you have to be perfect and omniscient, you also tend to believe that mistakes are the end of the world. I call this catastrophizing. It goes like this: “I made a mistake. The project is ruined. The future of the company is ruined. My career is ruined. My life is over.” Actually, most mistakes are correctible to a large degree, the project will likely continue, the company will be fine, and your career will not be blackened. Relax. Your life is not over.

“Everyone will think badly of me.”

Heavens, what if you are not perfect or omniscient and you make a mistake? Along with all the other catastrophes, everyone will think badly of you! They will look at you down their noses and say, “There she goes – what a terrible person! She screwed up. I used to think she was perfect, but I was sorely mistaken. I’m going to write her off.”

Irrational beliefs create a nasty double standard … and not in your favor!

Let me ask you this: when someone in your office makes an honest mistake, do you think to yourself, “I can’t believe it! He’s not perfect! He is less than omniscient! This is going to ruin everything completely! What a loser!”

Of course not. In a company, we’re all working on the same team, and we know that nobody is perfect. So when – not if – mistakes get made, we all pull together to fix things. In fact, I’ll bet you’ve encouraged a co-worker who has messed up to not worry about it and to pull out of their funk. You’ve probably told them, “Hey, we all make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. You can’t anticipate every eventuality. It’s not the end of the world!” So let me ask you: if you treat others with grace and compassion, why do you treat yourself so harshly?

You’ve probably invested a good deal of time and effort trying to decrease your stress in the workplace. Perhaps you’ve taken advantage of time management courses, conflict resolution seminars, communication style questionnaires, team building exercises, and all the rest of it. But I’d encourage you now to invest in a little “mind management” as well. Take a self-inventory to identify the irrational beliefs that are sabotaging you day-in and day-out, and learn how to replace them with truths that liberate.

I assure you, when you stop mentally sabotaging yourself on the job, you’ll be less stressed every day!

Paula Marolewski is a trainer in stress management tools and techniques. She offers practical, skill-based video tutorials through “Thrive Now!” (www.thrivenowseminars.com) to enable you to tackle stress, worry, and anxiety head on and reclaim your life.

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